This was a nice review and I won't commit to the price but a good sale might push me over the edge a few months down the road. I feel a stylus adds a lot of value. I agree with your judgement of you camera comparison but you may want to invest in a tripod and phone/tablet clamp so the camera sensor is in the same position and orientation for each picture- the tablet may have been tilted a little differently causing the autoexposure to expose a little more.

I think the market for this sort of device is the opposite of how it's presented in the article: if you needed a tablet with a stylus, how does this one fare against the competition? I think in most cases it would be worth its price with that criteria.

The digitizer is a big deal to some. I know several people who have purchased and returned tablets because what they really wanted was a digital notebook -- pen and all -- and pecking away at a tiny touch keyboard or trying to use a stylus without a decent digitizer was an exercise in frustration. This is aimed squarely at those folks, and I suspect it will be a decent seller. If I weren't happy with my tablet, I'd consider it. I don't use digital notes on my phone and tablet nearly as much as I would if taking notes were a more natural process.

good thing the pen is worth that much more to me.I sold my nexus 7 for this device and I love it in every way more than the nexus 7. I didn't care that it was $399, for what it's worth, if it was $499 I would still get it because there is nothing that comes close to the stylus on this device, PERIOD. Going forward. I don't think I would buy another tablet with out a S pen feature like this one.

Maybe the people reading a review about a stylus enabled tablet are the sort of people who would be interested in a stylus enabled tablet, and hence there is a higher number than might be expected of people saying that a stylus is important to them?

Also, the stylus looks a lot bigger than the one on the Samsung Ativ Pro Windows 8 tablet, which is absurdly small.Is the stylus comfortably usable, like a normal pen or similar?

As someone who invested into the Tablet PC movement in the early 2000's, I know and enjoy what digitizer pens bring to the table. As an artist and illustrator, there's a huge appeal at being able to sketch on the go on your digital device.

With that said, the capacitive styluses are manageable, but farm from ideal, and using them makes me wish I had the same sort of control I did on the old Tablet PC. For casual use though, I think capacitive touch controls are great.

So, I guess what I'm saying is both things bring a lot to the table, and in an ideal world all tablet devices will utilize both eventually. I'm not sold on this particular device, but I hope the trend becomes mainstream.

As someone who invested into the Tablet PC movement in the early 2000's, I know and enjoy what digitizer pens bring to the table. As an artist and illustrator, there's a huge appeal at being able to sketch on the go on your digital device.

With that said, the capacitive styluses are manageable, but farm from ideal, and using them makes me wish I had the same sort of control I did on the old Tablet PC. For casual use though, I think capacitive touch controls are great.

So, I guess what I'm saying is both things bring a lot to the table, and in an ideal world all tablet devices will utilize both eventually. I'm not sold on this particular device, but I hope the trend becomes mainstream.

I tried a capacitive stylus on my Transformer and then gave up. This was without having used any stylus before.Then I got an Ativ Pro (Win 8). A real digitiser/stylus is so much better, although the stylus in the Ativ Pro is tiny and hard to use in the hand, but interaction with the screen is so much better than a crappy capacitive stylus, which I found barely more useful than a finger.

Maybe the people reading a review about a stylus enabled tablet are the sort of people who would be interested in a stylus enabled tablet, and hence there is a higher number than might be expected of people saying that a stylus is important to them?

Also, the stylus looks a lot bigger than the one on the Samsung Ativ Pro Windows 8 tablet, which is absurdly small.Is the stylus comfortably usable, like a normal pen or similar?

It's just a little slimmer than most pens and pencils, I think. It's also plastic, so there's not as much weight to it as there is to many writing implements.

I've got a decent selection of devices that I don't particularly worry about upgrading, but I almost made the jump on this before the changes in the US models. At $400 I would have absolutely considered an all in one device. A durable tablet with a stylus, microSD slot, and powerful internals that also doubles as my cell phone? Yes please. Even with a Nexus 4 that might have been enough. That last part is what would have made it extremely tempting to me, but alas. Without that I can't see any way to really justify the price. It goes from a phone + tablet mix to just tablet which honestly cuts the value in half to me.

Does anyone know whether there are good alternatives if you're looking for an Android tablet with a physical home button?

I've customized several Android phones and tablets for use by elderly people and young kids. That is, installed a new launcher (like Apex), restricted access to just one home screen and apps placed on it, removed the dock, and locked the home screen from changes. Those steps alone go a long way into keeping these target groups from getting into situations that would require external assistance.

The thing is, both seniors and children often seem to struggle with Android devices that don't have a clearly placed physical home button (and I'm talking about people who have no experience with iPads either, so it's not that they're used to having it), and to some degree with capacitive buttons in the bezel area especially when rotating the device (accidental touches). For example, I've seen loads of elderly people struggle with the otherwise excellent Nexus 7's skimpy power button. For them, it really takes an effort just to turn the display on!

But there don't seem to be much alternatives, and I'm sorry, but for me, Apple is not an alternative.

Deep in the Apple ecosystem so I wouldn't get this myself, but I'd pay $70 more for a supported digitizer+stylus on an iPad. It's a huge deal for anyone that wants to use a stylus for stuff on a tablet and capacitive styluses don't compare (albeit they can be serviceable), so a $70 difference isn't a huge deal in that context.

It's just a little slimmer than most pens and pencils, I think. It's also plastic, so there's not as much weight to it as there is to many writing implements.

I hope some 3rd party starts manufacturing heavier replacements for the S Pen, unless some patent prevents that. I always used to replace the standard stylus in iPAQs with a satisfyingly heavy metal stylus (which fit the silo perfectly) that even had a ballpoint pen at the other end, hidden under a metal cap.

Numbers for performance (benchmarks all 150% of the mini) and the side-by-side multitasking put it way past the mini. No, it's not the value proposition the Nexus tablets are, but then let's see the ethics to have every review of Apple products point out how incredibly over-priced they are relative to the industry, as well as the much higher ecosystem costs (the massive number of apps which are paid only on iOS but have both ad-supported and typically lower priced Android versions).

Also, no rational, intelligent person cares all that much about tablet cameras. It has largely become a necessary (on paper), but utterly pointless accessory for 99.99% of usage.

So far I am happier with the Note 8 than the Transformer Infinity I have. Although 400 is a bit steep for it by any means it didn't feel like I got ripped off after my purchase. Especially since I will easily recoup the 400 by selling my TF700/dock combo I think it was a good purchase.

I did buy it for the stylus though. I think the nexus 7 HD will probably knock this out of the water but I should be happy with this tablet for a year at least. It sis quite snappy.

I think we need to remember that not everybody is a low-cost manufacturer with no R&D department, nor able to sell hardware at cost like Google. The Nexus 7 is an outlier in price; we're just used to it because it set the standard for 7" tablets.

My wife is looking to upgrade from her Eee Pad TF101 to an iPad mini, and I will try to steer her to at least test drive a Note 8 in comparison. Thing is that the local Microcenter is running an April price special on iPads in-store: the mini is $299. I like the feature set of the Note 8 more but my wife has become very enamored with the responsiveness of my iPad 3, but likes the mini form factor. I'm wondering if the S pen and screen res will sway her but fluidity and quick response seem to be her priorities atm. Also the fact that the mini is an iPad 2 and not a 3 may or may not make a difference, we shall see.

It's just a little slimmer than most pens and pencils, I think. It's also plastic, so there's not as much weight to it as there is to many writing implements.

I hope some 3rd party starts manufacturing heavier replacements for the S Pen, unless some patent prevents that. I always used to replace the standard stylus in iPAQs with a satisfyingly heavy metal stylus (which fit the silo perfectly) that even had a ballpoint pen at the other end, hidden under a metal cap.

I vaguely recall hearing you could use a standard Wacom stylus, iirc Samsung licensed Wacom's stuff and it's compatible with the other styluses as a result.

Android tablets that do not undercut Apple iPad have not done well so far. I don't think this will be any different. I still think the mainstream user (read: not people who read Ars) prefer iOS if the price is the same.

The phone is the largest you'd want. Sadly the phone does not deliver with the stock TouchWiz. A phone this large should have more rows and columns, but you only get more gap. Nova launcher is just a touch away though... With that in hand, and the font size turned down you get something that is very tablet-like.

The tablet comes in and can do everything the Note2 does, but you've got hella more display. But the same problems plague both: text entry.

I've only had the tablet a week now and I see both why I was reluctant and their potential. It is apps. Apps make the tablet usable. But if I need to chat with someone, I'm still whipping out my laptop.

Bringing this back home, Bigger phones/smaller tablets won't cut it. Samsung isn't making good use of the up-sized displays and many Android apps are not written correctly to really make use of additional screen real estate.

The note 2 already feels ludicrously large when held up to your face.

It could very well be that we are moving into another tier - with a cellular base station (tablet) and a micro-device (watch) and we'll split the current phone functions between the two. But until we get to make use the real estate we have, there's no reason for additional graduations in phablets.

The Note 8.0 has a pair of small stereo speakers on its bottom edge—they're both louder and of better quality than the single speaker on the Nexus 7, but they're easily blocked if you're holding the tablet in landscape mode.

Where, oh where, is my small tablet with a decent pair of front-facing speakers? I use my Nexus 7 for watching TV, movies and gaming a lot, and when not in public I prefer not to be cut off from the world by wearing headphones, but the crappy sound really bugs me. My old Nokia phone had louder, better quality sound from the speakers than the Nexus 7, for crying out loud. The HP Slate 7 supposedly will sound great, but it has crappy specs otherwise (1024x600 display, low-end CPU). HTC have made the HTC One phone with decent speakers, surely *somebody* can make a mid- or high-end small tablet with decent speakers too?